


be in their flowing cups freshly remembered

by madamebadger



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Family, Ficlet Collection, Fluff, Girl's night, Horse Racing, Multi, People Watching, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-29 23:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15739566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamebadger/pseuds/madamebadger
Summary: For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.(A collection of Mass Effect ficlets, gathered from where I initially posted them on my Tumbr. Mostly non-pairing/light-pairing, heavy on the friendship fic.)





	1. Race Day (MShep/Kaidan, Normandy Crew)

**Author's Note:**

> These have pretty much all been already posted on Tumblr, most of them a while ago, so if you recognize them... that would be why! I'm collecting them so they're in one spot.)
> 
> They are not always in the same continuity as one another, as an FYI.

“Here,” Kaidan said, pointing out their two seats amidst the block they’d reserved for the Normandy crew. Not that he begrudged any of them good seats… but in some ways rank hath its privilege, and one of those ways was in making sure that he and his partner got the prime seats for the New Victoria Stakes. Kaidan settled in next to him, the warm arm around his shoulder at once familiar and new: familiar because he’d learned to rely on Kaidan for so much for so long; new because bringing this most intimate element of their relationship public was not something he’d often done.

Behind Shepard, there was the faint squeak of Tali—not quite bouncing in her chair, she was far too much of an adult for that, but shifting her weight with her excitement and making the elderly stadium seats whine. ”It’s so amazing,” she said, breathless. “Animal racing!”

Shepard leaned back over his shoulder to say, “I don’t remember you getting this excited about varren racing at the casino.” Tali waved her hand as if to say, details, details.

“They were CG, not really there,” she said, “and not nearly as beautiful.” The horses were coming out to the paddock now, having their lips checked for their identifying tattoos, walking the ring—there was the grey called Biotic Supremacy, Liara’s favorite, flirting a little with its long milky tail. And then, there, Kaidan’s choice, the blood bay with a white blaze, Hastings Phoenix.

(”Hastings was the racetrack near Vancouver,” Kaidan had said, quiet, in the hushed dark of their bed the evening before. “Right now it’s basically a crater. —Which is better than most places can say, I know, I’m being a little sentimental….”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Shepard said, curving his hand around the warm skin of Kaidan’s shoulder.

“The stupid thing is I wasn’t really ever into horse racing. But when I heard they’d named a horse Hastings Phoenix, I—”

“I understand.” Shepard leaned in, kissed the nape of his neck, smelled the familiar soap-and-clean-skin-and-biotic-ozone aroma of him. “We’ll go.”)

Garrus made his way through the stands, balancing snacks and drinks in his arms. “That’s the last time I volunteer to pick up refreshments,” he said. “Although they had a pretty good selection for dextros.”

“Canada,” Kaidan said, smugly.

Garrus handed out the drinks—a fizzy dextro concoction for Tali, an asari white for Liara, beer for Kaidan, and bourbon-and-bitters for Shepard, and—ah!—there was Miranda, neatly dressed, her hair coiled atop her head, her sister by her side, accepting a glass of chilled prosecco. (Oriana already clutched an iced coffee.)

“Jacob—?” Shepard began.

“Brynn’s too close to term to travel,” Miranda said, settling herself into one of the seats, so gracefully that there was nary a squeak. “Wrex and Jack are insisting that their biotics might frighten the horses, and Javik’s using the same excuse, so they’re getting wasted in a bar a block from here. With Grunt... who isn’t a biotic, but probably who would still scare the horses. They asked us to join them when the race is over.”

“Let me guess,” Tali said, and then launched into a creditable Wrex impersonation: “’You get your sorry butts over here and drown your sorrows after you lose.’”

Miranda smiled. “More or less, yes.”

Shepard tried not to start as Kasumi shimmered into existence in the chair next to him, draping one leg over the other. “Of course whether we’ll lose or not depends on who’s fixing this one.”

“No one,” Liara said serenely.

Shepard shot her a glance. “The Shadow Broker doesn’t have an interest in this race?”

She gave him a calm blue look. “The Shadow Broker has quite a high interest in this race, and her interest is that no one should be fixing it.” Liara took a long sip of her Thessia white. “Bid, or don’t, as you like.”

Tali rolled to her feet. “Well, with that in mind… I want to put a bet on the prettiest horse.”

“You’re really supposed to bet on the fastest, Tali,” Kaidan said, “not the prettiest.”

“The prettiest,” Tali said firmly. “Garrus, give me a hand.” Garrus snorted, but got to his feet to join her.

Kaidan rubbed his eyes and shook his head. Then he leaned forward as the jockeys saddled up and the horses started the parade to post. Hastings Phoenix, with his jockey in red-and-purple silks, glowed in the strong sunlight. His blood chestnut coat caught the light, his tail flared like a banner, his blaze shone brighter than snow or sunlight, especially next to the dark, quiet grace of his liver chestnut escort.

Tali and Garrus settled back in behind them just as the gate crew maneuvered the horses into their places. (Tali leaned forward to tap on Kaidan’s shoulder, to say, “Hastings Phoenix is totally the prettiest,” and to elbow Garrus until he—eyes rolling—agreed.) The whole track held its breath in that stopped moment in which the slanting sunlight and the dust in the air seemed to freeze. And then—

—they broke, a thunder of hooves on the dirt track, slender legs slicing the warm blue day into rhythmic bars, chestnut and grey and bay, tails like the flags of rebel armies and the brilliance of silks, the churn of their heads as powerful bodies lunged forward with each stride, the magic of a solar furnace caged in an animals’ body and powering legs as slim and strong as shafts of daylight, and—

He caught Kaidan’s chin and drew him around for a kiss as deep as it was fleeting. “For luck,” he said, into the dust and sunlight, as the horses thundered around the track, and Kaidan smiled.


	2. Scenery (Tali'Zorah, Kasumi Goto)

“Oh _hello_ ,” Tali breathed, leaning forward, trying to get a better look. Even from across a crowded plaza, with the passersby intermittently blocking her view, she could make out the breadth of the man’s chest, the muscular line of his hocks. “What are you doing here…?”

Kasumi followed her gaze. “The quarian? Hmm… you’re right, not bad.”

“ _Look_ at those shoulders,” Tali said. “Oh. What’s someone like that doing here?”

“On pilgrimage?” Kasumi suggested.

Tali flapped a hand at her dismissively without looking away from the quarian man, who was now gesturing angrily at the shopkeeper. “No no, people on pilgrimage, they’re kids.” Never mind that she’d just completed hers not two years before. “That is no kid, not with shoulders like that.” She didn’t recognize the suit pattern, a handsome combination of dark blue and copper, and pauldrons and armor straps polished black. A realization crashed over her: “…He’s probably an exile, then. Damn it.” She grabbed for her drink and took a long sip, letting the sweet burn wash away her disappointment. (Irrational disappointment… it wasn’t as though she was looking to pick someone up, or even in any position to do so. But….)

“Come on, there must be happier options.” Kasumi sounded amused.

Tali brightened. “Maybe he’s here negotiating for something for his ship, sometimes we send marines out to do that.” She leaned forward. “He moves like a Migrant Fleet Marine. Maybe that’s it.”

“Nice biceps,” Kasumi said.

“Mm,” Tali agreed, and they lapsed into admiring silence for a moment as the quarian and the asari shopkeeper continued their apparently-contentious negotiation. Tali watched the muscles in his back flex beneath his suit as he leaned forward, her eyes tracking downward. Nice ass, too. Nice forearms. Nice everything. She sighed.

Then Kasumi kicked her in the ankle. “Tali. Go introduce yourself.”

Tali’s breath left her in a splutter. “Really, Kasumi? And say what exactly? ‘Hello, I was checking out your butt from across the plaza and I wanted to see if you’re a dishonorable exile and, if not, whether you want to have a drink with me and my extremely nosy friend’?”

Kasumi dimpled. “There are worse pickup lines.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

“I could do it for you. ‘My friend over there, the cute girl with the curves, she was wondering if you were as sexy out of your suit as you are in it.’”

Tali inhaled sharply and nearly choked on her drink. “ _Don’t you dare_.”

“All right, all right.” Kasumi waved her glass airily. “I still think you should go for it, but do what you want.”

Tali exhaled, exasperated, and fell silent as the quarian completed his transaction and strode away across the plaza. He moved like a marine, with the long easy strides that you rarely saw on quarians who didn’t go on patrol… but that didn’t mean anything; you could just as easily say that he moved like a mercenary, who had lost his habit of moving quietly like Fleet-living folk. For a mad moment she considered getting up, going after him, introducing herself as Kasumi had said. Her brain flashed all the many, many ways that that could go wrong at her… and then the moment passed and he vanished into the crowd.

Kasumi sighed. “You need a little more confidence, Tali.”

“I don’t see you making a move either,” Tali said. “You’ve done nothing with Jacob but watch him do crunches and sigh.”

For a second she thought she’d gone too far, but then Kasumi laughed and leaned back, folding her hands primly in front of her. “I’m getting exactly what I want out of that,” she said. “Anyway, my role in life is to live vicariously through my friends.”

“Right,” Tali drawled.

“So you need to step up your game to accommodate me.”

“ _Right_.”


	3. Photograph (Ashley Williams/James Vega)

Ashley’s mom has a table full of pictures of her daughters, like—James figures—probably pretty much every other proud mother in the galaxy. Four are the kinds of pictureframes that cycle through a collection of images, one frame for each girl. When he stops to find Ashley’s, it’s displaying what he recognizes immediately as the classic look-mom-and-dad-I-did-it Alliance enlistee picture, the kind taken on your first posting after training. Ashley looks a little stiff in her new Alliance serviceman uniform, is standing ramrod-straight with her shoulders back and her chin up, and her face has the unmistakable look of someone who’s trying to force down elation under a Very Serious grown-up demeanor. (He got one of his buddies to take one of him that could be the twin to this one, back in the day, and sent it to Tio Emilio.) She can’t be older than eighteen or nineteen. As he watches, the image fades out, replaced by what must be baby Ashley (although really all babies look alike to him) whacking a plastic elephant against the bars of her crib.

The fifth pictureframe, though, appears to be static. It’s a group shot. He picks it up for a closer look. There’s Ashley—she can’t be any older than thirteen or fourteen, but he would still recognize the lines of her face anywhere—in the middle. She’s gangly and long-limbed and skinny, a good head taller even than Abby, wearing a Sirona Serpents t-shirt, her hair (already long) pulled back into a tight ponytail that the camera has caught in mid-swing. She’s carrying a girl of three or four on her hip (Sarah, he presumes) and smiling a glassy posed-for-the-camera smile. Abby, on her left, looks ten or eleven, curly-haired and round-faced and cute, grinning for the camera. Lynn looks maybe seven or eight, with big serious eyes, caught in the act of smoothing her neatly-pleated skirt. Sarah, cheek against Ashley’s shoulder, is looking shy in a particularly sweet way that James is pretty sure is a put-on. Even here, you can see the similarities they’ll share in adulthood—the dark hair, the dark eyes, the high cheekbones (although they’re somewhat obscured, in Sarah’s case, by baby fat). And nonetheless, even here you can see the ways their personalities are all distinct, all different—even Sarah, young as she is.

Ashley leans over his shoulder and plucks the frame out of his hands. “Ugh, I always hated this picture,” she says, giving it a critical look. “I remember when it was taken. I was convinced I’d be flat-chested and clumsy and covered in pimples forever.”

James is intimately aware that she is, currently, not remotely any of those things. Wisely, he does not observe this out loud. Instead he says, “I dunno, I think it’s a cute picture.”

Ashley’s still looking at it, nose wrinkled. “And Abby was such a brat about it, she hadn’t gone through puberty and she knew she was still adorable. They were all still adorable. I was the only one tripping over her own feet and washing her hair twice a day.”

“Hey, it’s not so bad. When I was thirteen my nickname was ‘Runty.’”

Ashley stops looking critically at the picture, stares at James with her eyebrows raised. “I do not for a second believe that your nickname was ever ‘Runty.’”

“Late bloomer. I looked like I was nine until I was about fourteen. Then I grew a foot in a year. Heh, a lot of people regretted calling me Runty after that.”

Ashley smiles. Her mother, emerging from the kitchen, reaches over her shoulder and plucks the picture out of her hands. “I happen to like this one,” she says, putting it back in its place. “It wasn’t that long after that was taken that you all started going off your separate ways. Dinner’s ready, by the way.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title/summary is, of course, from Shakespeare's [St. Crispin's Day Speech](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Crispin%27s_Day_Speech).


End file.
